Talat Shahnaz Rahman is a Pakistani condensed matter physicist whose research topics include surface phenomena and excited media, including

catalysis Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

, vibrational dynamics, and magnetic excitations. She has also helped develop molecules that can "walk" across a solid surface by moving one part of the molecule while keeping another part attached to the surface. She is UCF Pegasus Professor of Physics at the

University of Central Florida The University of Central Florida (UCF) is a public research university whose main campus is in unincorporated Orange County, Florida. UCF also has nine smaller regional campuses throughout central Florida. It is part of the State University ...

Education and career

Rahman earned a bachelor's degree in physics from the

University of Karachi The University of Karachi ( sd, ; informally Karachi University, KU, or UoK) is a public research university located in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. Established in June 1951 by an act of Parliament and as a successor to the University of Sindh (wh ...

in 1969, a master's degree from the University of Islamabad in 1970, and a Ph.D. from the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants Undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate degrees, including Doctorate, do ...

in 1977. After postdoctoral research at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...

, she became an assistant professor at Kansas State University in 1984, and by 2001 she was University Distinguished Professor at Kansas State. She moved to the University of Central Florida in 2006 as Distinguished Professor and chair of the physics department; she became Pegasus Professor in 2012 and stepped down as chair in 2015.

Recognition

Rahman became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1998, and a Fellow of the

American Vacuum Society AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and ProcessingAIP: A Federation of the Physical Sciences

in 2016 for her "theoretical and computational contributions to understanding governing properties (chemical, optical, magnetic, vibrational) of nanoscale materials, to foster rational design of functional materials for various applications, in a bottomup approach". She won the

Humboldt Prize The Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungspreis in German, also known as the Humboldt Research Award, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of G ...

in 2000.

References

External links

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rahman, Talat Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Pakistani physicists Pakistani women physicists American physicists American women physicists University of Karachi alumni Quaid-i-Azam University alumni University of Rochester alumni Kansas State University faculty University of Central Florida faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society Humboldt Research Award recipients